


Picnics, Pranksters, and Poissons

by JA_Authoress



Series: Muggle Mishaps [51]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: April Fools, F/M, M/M, Nonsense, Pranking, Sirius Black & Lily Evans Potter Friendship, competitive Lily, jily, wolfstar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2016-04-01
Packaged: 2018-05-30 13:14:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6425422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JA_Authoress/pseuds/JA_Authoress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>April 1, 1979</p><p>Sirius found out about poissons d'avril.  Naturally, he and Lily have a competition to see how many fish they could stick on people's backs without being noticed.</p><p>“It’s raining!”</p><p>“It’s barely a drizzle, Black, it’ll probably clear up soon enough.”</p><p>“But the paper’s melting!”</p><p>“What?!"</p><p>“How do we keep score if it shrivels up and melts off?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Picnics, Pranksters, and Poissons

April 1, 1979

“I have no idea how we managed to pull this off.”

“Beats me, Evans, I thought for sure Moony’d be suspicious after running into you and Prongs, but he hasn’t said a word.”

“When Peter makes his way over though, they’re all going to know something’s up.” Lily busied herself with laying out the red and white checkered picnic blanket. James and Remus went to get tea from the shop around the corner because in James’s exact words, ‘I’m not drinking tea out of a metal cup, I’m British!’.

Sirius helped her set out the picnic basket (which was the most suspicious thing he’d done so far that day). “Oh please, Evans, it’s not like they’d suspect it’s got anything to do with us.”

Lily ‘hmm’d and rolled her eyes. It was very true, Sirius and her never really got along very well. They were considerably more civil to one another once she and James started dating, but they were hardly even on a first name basis.

“Are we clear on the rules?”

“One hour to stick as many of these little fish onto each other, Moony, Prongs, and Wormtail as possible. If they find it within thirty seconds, no point.” Sirius toyed with one of the small white paper fishes he’d spent all night cutting out. “I don’t think we’ve agreed on this yet, but are sticking charms allowed?”

Lily thought very carefully about her answer. The fish would be quite difficult to stick using muggle tape… “I suppose so...” She saw the gleam in Sirius’s eye. “Absolutely NO permanent charms! The last thing I want to do is ruin my favourite jacket, and you know exactly what Remus would do to you if you ruined another one of his jumpers.”

The gleam quickly disappeared from his eye, and was replaced with horror at the thought of Remus being angry at him.

The two competitors shook hands upon agreement, which earned an odd look from James and Remus once they returned with tea.

“Black and I were just agreeing to be civil for the duration of this barmy picnic.” Lily half-lied. She was going to absolutely beat Sirius at this. Nothing could deter a competitive Lily.

James seemed to accept the half truth and moved on to lunch. His mother made curry for them and he couldn’t let that get cold.

Remus’s eyes remained narrowed for several minutes, glancing between Sirius and Lily as if trying to guess what was really going on here. The idea that they were working together on something never crossed his mind once.

“Peter! What a pleasant surprise!” Lily used her best acting skills, which weren’t all that great, but she certainly more believable than Sirius would have been.

Determined green eyes met with mischievous grey.

The game was afoot!

Now, of course Sirius knew about April Fools. Everyone and their great-aunt twice removed knew about it. He just had no idea it was something muggles celebrated too.

He first found out about the muggle side of the tradition through Lily’s cousin while in Montreal. He’d mentioned that in some places in Europe celebrate April Fools, or _poissons d’avril_ , by sticking paper fish to the victim’s back without being noticed. Naturally, he thought it was an absolutely brilliant idea, and brought it up with Lily while they were seated next to each other on the plane ride home. Thus this little competition was born.

12:08 p.m.

Sirius cuddled up next to Remus, which in all honesty wasn’t suspicious at all, and carefully stuck a fish onto his shoulder while stealing a bite of his naan bread.

“Padfoot, you have perfectly good naan right beside you.”

“Everything you touch is just better: jumpers, essays, naan bread…” Sirius mock argued, wriggling a finger at Lily, who scowled and stuck a fish under the collar of James’s shirt.

Those were definitely the easiest fish of the hour.

12:24 p.m.

Lily was grinning at him. It was highly unlike her.

It was almost as if… Sirius’s hand flew onto this back, feeling around for—there it was. He picked off the offending white fish from his left shoulder blade. How had he not noticed that!

12:28 p.m.

Peter was minding his own business, watching Remus and James try to flick bits of chocolate into each others mouths.

“Good shot Moony, you’re a natural! Oh, nice dive Prongs, I give that nine outa ten for style.”

“A nine!” James ran a hand through his wild hair. “I’m definitely a ten outa ten, mate.”

“Well, you did land in a bit of curry on your last dive there, didn’t you?” Remus gestured to his elbow.

“Bugger!”

Peter was so thoroughly distracted, he didn’t notice the small fish being stuck onto his back by Lily and Sirius. He wound up with thirteen in total before he finally detected something fishy was going on.

12:37 p.m.

Remus knew something was up. He’d been apprehensive about the day from the moment he woke up to a phone call from Winnie telling him to ‘take the day off work and relax with your boyfriend’.

Running into Lily and James was no coincidence either, although obviously James wasn’t in on anything. He seemed genuinely surprised, and had zero time to prepare himself for an armful of Sirius, who immediately pounced.

Then when Peter showed up, it solidified his suspicions. Really, who goes to the park by themselves on a Sunday unless they were told to be there?

He heard snickering behind him and whirled around. Lily was trying to keep a straight face, while Sirius simply scowled.

“That doesn’t count,” Sirius stated blandly.

“It does too!” Lily insisted. “Otherwise we’ll have to void your last point on James.”

“Fineeeeeeeee,” Sirius sighed dramatically. He sauntered over and nuzzled Remus’s neck. “Moony! Evans is being mean to me.”

Remus chuckled and gave his boyfriend a sympathetic pat on the back, completely unaware of the fish being stuck onto his jumper.

12:45 p.m.

“Evans!” Sirius whispered loudly.

“What?” Lily tore her eyes away from the game of Frisbee keep-away James and Peter were playing with Remus, who was surprisingly bad at it.

“It’s raining!”

“It’s barely a drizzle, it’ll probably clear up soon enough.”

“But the paper’s melting!”

“What?” Lily looked around for her small fish. They seemed perfectly fine.

“How do we keep score if it shrivels up and melts off?”

“We’ll just have to keep on top of things, won’t we?”

Sirius looked terribly concerned for another three seconds, then his face split into a shit-eating grin. Lily grabbed at her back and came up with a damp fish near the bottom of her jacket.

The hour wasn’t up yet.

12:59 p.m.

James wasn’t as blissfully unaware of everything as everyone thought. He could practically smell a prank in the air. He had seven years of training under his belt, and while he’d definitely matured a bit, he most certainly hadn’t matured a lot.

He knew Lily and Sirius were having some sort of competition. He was pretty sure there were small white paper fish involved, but he’d only caught a glimpse of one or two on the backs of his mates. It didn’t really matter though.

Lily suddenly let out a shriek, and James sprung into action.

“Lily-love! What’s wrong? What happened?”

“I won!” she cried. Quite literally, a few stray tears of happiness rolled down her pale freckled cheeks. “Black tried to cheat, but I still won!”

“Aww, there, there, Pads,” Remus said, wrapping Sirius up in a hug. “There’s always next time.”

“I won us one official Sirius-Free Date a month!” Lily leapt into James’s arms. “I don’t even have to use a coupon for it.”

James grinned up at his fiancée, but he watched at Remus whispered something into Sirius’s ear out of the corner of his eye, and the two of them exchanged sly grins. They’d probably find away around that clause, but there was no way he was about to burst Lily’s bubble.

He twirled Lily around a few times, then set her down and wrapped one arm around her, and the other around Sirius (after prying him out of Remus’s grasp).

“I’m just happy I get to see two of my favourite people in the world getting along. It just warms my heart.”

“Oi, Prongs, are you actually crying?”

“Shut up, Moony!”

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone~ I wanted to get something out for James's birthday, but obviously that didn't happen... You get April Fools instead! I'm participating in Camp NaNoWriMo this April, so I wanna focus on my novel for this month, but expect something exciting coming up in May!
> 
> Thanks to everyone for keeping up with me so far. If you liked this episode, please leave a kudos/comment ^_^
> 
> Remember! Pranks are all well and fun, but chocolate is better.
> 
> Have a wonderful day!


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